By Blood Written (18 page)

“But I got a lady up here who says she knows who killed those two girls over on Church Street.”

Chavez paused for a moment before speaking. “She for real?”

The front desk corporal lowered his voice as if turning away from the visitor. “Kinda hard to tell. She’s like this old lady, you know. Looks a little, I don’t know … Maybe odd.”

“Maybe
odd,” Chavez repeated. “Great. You know what time it is, Rogers? It’s six in the freakin’ A.M. in the dead of freakin’ winter. Make her go away.”

“Tried that already, Detective. She says she ain’t going anywhere until she talks to somebody.”

Maria gripped the phone so hard her hand began to cramp.

“Damn it, I shoulda stayed in bed. Who was I to think I could get some quiet time around here?”

“I can’t answer that, Detective Chavez. Sorry.”

“All right,” Maria said, sighing. “I’m on my way.”

She hung up the phone, crossed the hall back into the break room, and picked up her teacup. She pulled the bag out and dropped it into a garbage can, then sipped the tea.

She winced; it was way too strong now. Maria forced down one more sip, then, disgusted, poured the rest in the sink and started down the long hallway. This was, she conjectured, not going to be a good day.

Maria pushed the heavy door open out into the main lobby and crossed behind the brick staircase over to the command center. Corporal Rogers spied her approaching and motioned with his head to the front of the lobby. Maria stepped past Rogers and through the metal detector.

An elderly, thin woman of medium height stood looking out the front window, her back at an angle to Chavez. Maria stopped for a moment and watched her. She had a brown leather purse slung over her right shoulder, and over her left hung a faded white canvas tote bag with the words MALICE

DOMESTIC printed on the front. There was something in the tote bag, something that seemed to put a strain on the woman’s shoulders. She wore a heavy checked overcoat and a pair of hiking boots with thick gray socks all the way up to her knees. Her straight gray hair was pulled behind with a red wool beret perched at an angle on her head.

Maria cleared her throat. “Excuse me,” she said. The woman turned. Her face was lined and pale; she wore no makeup and her eyebrows were almost completely plucked.

But her blue eyes were clear and bright.

“Oh, yes,” the woman said. “I’m sorry, I was staring out the window. I guess I’m kind of tired. I’ve been up all night.”

Maria stepped toward her. “I’m Priscilla Janovich,” the old woman said, extending her hand. The tote bag slipped down her forearm, causing her arm to jerk.

“I’m Detective Chavez. May I help you?”

“Yes,” she said, and as she did so, Maria caught a whiff of the old woman’s breath. Maria’s nose wrinkled for the second time that morning.
Drinking? This early?

The shifting tote bag seemed to unbalance the woman, and Maria began to wonder just how drunk she was.

“Yes, you can help me. Or maybe it’s the other way around.

Maybe I can help you.”

“Perhaps you should tell me what’s on your mind,” Maria suggested.

“Didn’t that young man tell you?”

“Well,” Maria said, shrugging. “Why don’t you tell me again?”

“Of course,” the woman said. “I know who killed those two girls over on Church Street. And all the others.”

Maria felt her brow knit. “Others?”

“Yes,” the woman said. “The Alphabet Man, I know who he is.”

Maria felt her stomach jump just above her belt line. This was the second time in two weeks someone had tossed out that name to her in the lobby.

“What did you say your name was?”

“Priscilla. Priscilla Janovich.”

“Well, Mrs. Janovich—”

“Miss, please.”

“Miss
Janovich.” Maria corrected herself. “Why don’t we go back to my office and talk.”

“Oh, yes, I think we should,” Priscilla said, as Maria stepped aside and motioned for her to go first.

Maria escorted her past the guard cage and over to the heavy metal doors that barred the way into the interior of police headquarters. She slipped her ID out of her front blouse pocket and slid it through the card reader.

“This way,” she instructed.

She led Priscilla down the hall until they got to an interview room. “Would you like something?” Maria asked.

“There’s no coffee on right now, but a glass of water, a Coke perhaps?”

Shot of Jack Daniel’s?
she thought.

“No, I’m fine. I think we should get to this.” The interview room was small, with a mirror on one wall and a small table with two metal chairs. Priscilla Janovich sat down in a metal chair behind the table as Maria sat opposite her.

“Is there anyone on the other side of that mirror?” Priscilla Janovich asked.

Maria smiled. “You obviously watch a lot of television, Miss Janovich.”

“Oh no, only a few shows. But I read a lot. Almost all mysteries.”

“Ah,” Maria said. “So you’re a big mystery fan …”

“Yes, that’s how I figured out who the Alphabet Man was.

After I read that article in the Sunday
Times
yesterday.”

“So that’s how you heard the term ‘Alphabet Man,’” Maria chimed. “For a minute there, I thought everybody’d read our case files.”

“So you are investigating the murder,” Priscilla said, her voice excited. “You know, I’m so glad they put a woman on that case, it’s just—”

“Miss Janovich, there are a lot of detectives working those murders, and we’ve had a lot of people tell us they know who did it. A few have even confessed. Not one’s been straight with us, though.”

“Oh, well, I am,” Priscilla said. “I know.”

“Okay,” Maria said. “I’ll bite. Who is the Alphabet Man?”

Priscilla Janovich leaned down and pulled the canvas tote bag up into her lap, then upended it onto the table. Four paperbacks tumbled out.

“Him,” Priscilla said, pointing at one of the books. “He did it.”

Maria stared at the pile of battered paperbacks. “Who?”

she asked blankly. “Who did it?”

“Him!
” Priscilla said, pointing. “Michael Schiftmann!

The man who wrote these books!”

A half hour later, Priscilla Janovich had finished her synopsis of each one of the four paperback editions of Michael Schiftmann’s novels. She explained that she’d read the latest book,
The Fifth Letter
, but hadn’t bought it yet since it wasn’t out in paperback. Priscilla went on to say in a moment of supreme irrelevancy that she was such a mystery fanatic she read her favorite writers in hardcover on loan from the library, then when the paperback was issued—usually a year or so later—she bought the cheaper edition and read the book again.

“And yesterday, when I read the article in the
New York
Times
, I realized I’d heard all this before!” Priscilla said, her eyes beaming.

Maria looked up from the yellow legal pad where she’d been taking notes. “So you’re saying this guy commits murders, then writes books about them.”

“Yes,” Priscilla said excitedly. “He bases the plots of his novels on murders he commits. Oh, he changes the locations around and some of the details, but the substance is there.

You can’t change that.”

“Okay, so—”

“And the books are really good!” Priscilla continued. “I mean, I sat down yesterday afternoon and started rereading them again from the first and wound up reading all four in a row.”

Priscilla rearranged the books in order of publication. “I was up all night,” she said proudly.

It shows …
Maria thought.

“And I’m sure that if I got the fifth one and reread it, it would only back up what I already know.”

Maria leaned forward on the small table, her elbows perched on the edge. “Miss Janovich, I don’t mean to doubt your word here, but can you understand how tenuous this is? Do you see how little this is to go on? I mean, how little sense this makes? I don’t know this guy”—Maria looked down at the paperbacks—”Michael Schiftmann, but he’s obviously, like, a famous writer and stuff. If the guy’s on the best-seller list, why would he go around committing these murders.”

“If you read the books, my dear,” Priscilla Janovich said, slipping into teacher mode, “you’d know the answer to that question already. He kills because it’s the right thing for him and because he
likes
it!”

The old woman’s words echoed in Maria’s mind. She remembered the first briefing she’d been given by the FBI agent, whose name she couldn’t remember because it was too early in the morning and she still hadn’t had her tea yet.

Even though Priscilla’s choice of words made the hair on the back of her neck prickle, it still didn’t overcome her common sense, every bit of which told her this old lady was crazy and her story was ridiculous.

“Look, Miss Janovich, I’ve made notes on what you’ve told me and I’ll enter it in the record,” Maria said. “But we can’t pursue something like this when—”

“You don’t believe me, do you?” Priscilla demanded sternly.

“Well, it’s not that, it’s just that we have to have more sub-stantive evidence to go on. Sheer speculation isn’t enough.”

“Why don’t you read the books?” Priscilla asked. “See if it doesn’t make sense to you.”

“I’m very busy, Miss Janovich,” Maria said defensively.

“We’ve all got a lot to do around—”

“That’s no excuse!” Priscilla snapped.

“Ma’am, I’m sorry, but I just don’t think I can do anything on what is obviously speculation. I mean, we don’t even know this guy. And anyway, these murders you’re talking about that were allegedly recorded in this guy’s books, they’re outside our jurisdiction. We can’t do anything about that.”

“What about those two girls on Church Street?”

Maria nodded her head. “See, there you go. Good point.

We don’t have anything to connect him to those murders.

Nothing.”

“Oh yes you do!” Priscilla exclaimed.

Maria felt her blood pressure rising. She had to extricate herself from this as quickly as possible. There was too much work to do.

“What?” Maria asked. “What have we got to connect him to these murders?”

“Well,” Priscilla Janovich said in a huff. “How about the night those two girls were killed he was in Nashville?”

Maria stopped cold. “How—how do you know that?”

“I met him,” Priscilla announced in triumph.

Maria thought the old lady really had gone off the deep end now. “Oh,” she said, patronizingly, “and where did you meet him?”

“At the Davis-Kidd bookstore in Green Hills,” Priscilla said, smiling. “He was doing a book signing. Just check the newspaper. Better yet, call them.”

An aggravated Lieutenant Max Bransford hung up the phone, pulled his massive bulk out of the worn desk chair, and went to the open doorway of his office.

“Bea, you seen Chavez anywhere?”

Bransford’s longtime secretary looked up from her computer screen. “No, sir, not all day.”

“Damn it,” he muttered, walking past her and out into the hall. He walked twenty feet or so down the hallway and stuck his head in the squad room. Four detectives sat behind desks, each with his head buried in a folder.

“Hey, any you guys seen Chavez?” No one looked up.

“Chavez, guys. Remember her? Short, brunette, slight Hispanic accent, carries a gun. I just got a call from Hershel over at the ME’s office. She was supposed to be there an hour ago to pick up the tox screen reports on the Grant murder.”

Jack Murray looked up. “I saw her this morning, Loot.

Had to run upstairs to Print Division. Passed by the break room up there.”

“The break room?” Bransford asked.

Murray hesitated. “Yeah, Loot, the break room. She was laying on the couch.”

Bransford felt the pressure from his jaw grinding his teeth together. “She sick?”

Murray shook his head. “Didn’t look like it.”

“What was she doing then, son?”

“Uh, she was reading a book, sir.”

“Reading a book …” Bransford said slowly. Murray nodded. Bransford turned and headed down the hall to the lobby.

Reading … Lying on a couch … In the middle of the
day …

This was just weird enough to arouse Bransford’s curiosity. He walked down to the main lobby, then climbed the staircase to the second story. He ran his ID through the card reader outside the second-floor main entrance, then opened the heavy metal doors. He went down one hallway, turned left, then went down another hallway past the Fingerprint Division. He stopped at an open door, his bulk filling the doorway.

Inside the small room, on a couch against the far wall, Maria Chavez reclined with her head on the armrest facing away from the door. She held a paperback book open between her hands. On the floor next to her was a stack of file folders, a legal pad covered in scribbles, and an open felt-tipped pen.

Bransford cleared his throat loudly, which elicited no response at all from Chavez. Bransford cleared his throat again and took two steps toward the couch. Chavez bent her head while still lying down and looked over her shoulder.

She spied Bransford, quickly raised up on her hips, and put both feet on the floor.

“Oh, hi, Lieutenant,” she said. Maria still held the book open on her knees. Bransford looked at the spine of the book and read the words:
The Third Letter
. Bransford thought she looked a little zoned out, almost in a trance.

“Hello, Maria,” Bransford said calmly. “You want to tell me what’s going on here?”

Maria Chavez stared ahead for a second, as if still someplace far away. Then she looked back up, directly into Max Bransford’s eyes, and he saw an intensity and a clarity that he’d seen in another person’s eyes only a few times in his life. It was the look of epiphany.

“What was that FBI agent’s name?” she asked.

Bransford studied her for a few moments. “Powell,” he said finally. “Hank Powell.”

She looked away. “Yes, Powell …” Then she turned and looked back at Bransford. “We have to call him. Now.”

“But why?” Bransford asked.

“Sit down, Max,” Maria said, motioning with her head to the chair next to her. “You’re not gonna believe this.”